Wide angle lens have many advantages for CCTV and IP video surveillance. The first advantage is wide field of view. See images above. The second advantage is quite good low-light performance. And last but not least, wide angle lens provide good depth of field in compare with telephoto lenses. The main drawback of wide angle lens is a possible geometrical distortion, which appears as visible curvatures at the edges of a camera image.
This is a reason to find a proper balance between wide field of view and possible image distortions.
To find a proper focal length for wide angle lens the CCTV designer needs to perform many calculations. To ease the lens selection the designer can use special 3D CCTV design software where you can clearly see both: the actual field of view and lens distortions.
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